I also have to agree with Nick who started this thread and all the other
common sense fellows against the removal of ID from a bicycle.
Thuggery? Maybe .
It's more tantamount to rape IMO.
A few years ago I was doing more single tube tire bikes from the 20's and
'30's.
A colleague of mine who did balloon tire classic cruisers was doing some
business with a guy in suburban Orange County who happened to buy a stash of
several hundred frames, bikes and other nifty suff of the era.
My buddy said that the guy was sorta a hippy like free spirit type guy. We
made some time and got to him about a month after he let people know about
his "find".
When we got to his little shop , nice old stuff was displayed in some cases
as is typical of the era in the fringe areas.
The old bike parts were being "worked" on down in basement lockers, about 75
feet worth of storage.
There was an unsavory character with unfocusing eyes mutilating the bies.
One by one, the cranksets and headsets were being taken out, sprockets taken
off and then the parts were tossed in separate boxes to keep them "in
order".
ALL the nameplates were being removed for sale and when I asked the guy in
the catacombs why he was taking them apart like that his comment was so they
could sell the stuff separately and paint the frames and forks??
I asked the erstwhile proprietor, (the shop and dungeon did have a strange
smell?? ) why they were stripping the bikes like that, and he thought that
it would be easier to sell.
When I asked him how he was going to ID the frames, forks, and respective
parts he said it was easy to remember.!!??
There were over 100 frames hanging in total raped mode.
I didn't let my better judgement administer the deserved punishment on the
spot, so I told my friend that I'd seen enough and thought it was time to
mosey along. I wouldn't have bought anything or accepted anything for free!
We heard a few months later that he was gone and out of business.
For whatever.
That's what happened to too many bikes so that's why we're missing so much
today.
When the marginal, hippy drug? types or commodity brokers get in anything
the cesspool is the next stop.
Let's do our best to prevent the destruction where possible.
I don't have a problem collecting badges, and any used ones I have have by
and large come off wrecked junkers that had the frames ruined and were
scrapped, after parts were removed and labeled.
Unfortunately the desecration goes on.
Ted Ernst
Palos Verdes Estates
CA USA
> At 03:29 PM 23/11/2007 -0800, Waldo Magnuson wrote:
>> Nick March (France), I agree with you. I have a friend who looked
>>at my Italian bike and then at the badge and said: "That badge is worth
>>$80". He had little regard for the rest of the bike.
>
> Yeah, it's an outrage that a badge today would go for more than the bike
> sold for originally. I had been looking for a Claud Butler headbadge after
> I acquired a '51 Allrounder frame. Apparently these show up on eBay at
> least a couple of times a year, and since they were apparently used over a
> couple of decades after Clauds were no longer made by Claud Butler, one
> would think there would have been a lot of expendable donor bikes.
> However,
> when a list member alerted me to a badge on eBay, I watched it escalate
> over $50. No thanks. Fortunately, my frame shows no evidence of any rivet
> holes, so I'll make do with a decal, sonce a badge would not even be
> correct.
>
>>Any thoughts
>>out there regarding badge removal before painting?
>
> You mean you removed one, doing no harm, and still aren't sure if you went
> about it the right way? I would either carefully dremel off the rivet
> heads, or centre punch them and drill them using progressively larger bits
> until they fell off. As for re-attaching the badge, there are tiny pop
> rivets, but they look a bit tacky and definitely not period correct. H.
> Lloyd's has copper and brass headbadge rivets, which should be the right
> type.
>
> John Betmanis
> Woodstock, Ontario
> Canada